


Hurts Doesn't It

by ragefsevenseas



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-27 03:18:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16694425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ragefsevenseas/pseuds/ragefsevenseas
Summary: you know that feeling? the one that swallows you whole for a moment when you look in your mirror? you look and find yourself staring because you don't know whose reflection that is. it can't be yours. you don't look like that. but you do. don't you?|| a project in the works





	Hurts Doesn't It

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys! i watched daredevil season 3 in my october break and i've been itching to write something about our dearly beloved characters ever since then. im a freshmen undergrad so needless to write, i've been lacking serious motivation and time to do so. but i finally came up with something. 
> 
> i've taken a poetry course this term, so my poetry professor has assigned us this weird task of a "poetry intervention" of sorts. she asked us to share a few poems with people and find out the impact of these poems in their lives. 
> 
> so i figured i'd write one-shots involving poems in them for matt, karen and foggy upon specific instances that occured throughout season 3.
> 
> i was hoping for a little help here from yall. 
> 
> it would *really* help me if you could comment on how you found the poem to be attached to the characters and how similar/different this gimmick is from song one-shots that you've read. 
> 
> help me out here guys. i have to write a paper on this experiment. 
> 
> okay, enough of my rambling. i hope you like the one-shots!!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the poem is "kindness" by naomi shihab nye. 
> 
> i used parts of it to suit what i wrote, just so you know.

(karen) 

 

  

_**Before you know what kindness really is** _

_**you must lose things,** _

_**feel the future dissolve in a moment** _

_**like salt in a weakened broth.** _

 

 

“God. I’m sorry”

 

Karen’s heard that one before.

 

She’s heard that whisper, that yell, that shout and that voice outside and inside her. She’d quelled that voice for quite some time now. She pushed it away. Pretended it didn’t matter. An apology didn’t get her anywhere anyway.

 

 

_**What you held in your hand,** _

_**what you counted and carefully saved,** _

_**all this must go so you know** _

_**how desolate the landscape can be** _

_**between the regions of kindness.** _

 

 

She talked though. Talked to Neda, the one who was in pain then. The one who probably felt her father’s situation was her fault. The one who needed her story more than her. Needed to know Kevin’s story, to feel an empathetic connection to her. In order to give her the information to write the truth.

 

 

_**You must see how this could be you,** _

_**how he too was someone** _

_**who journeyed through the night with plans** _

_**and the simple breath that kept him alive.** _

 

 

 

(god Kevin.

He was the good one.

the one who’d mattered to her and to her father.

the one who’d kept her family together after her mother had died.

Grief had never left her building as far as she knows)

 

She continued to talk. Tells her about Vermont, as blurred memories of wisps of heat, bunched in biting cold, thready sweaters and knitted hoodies passed through her mind.

 

 

_**Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,** _

_**you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.** _

_**You must wake up with sorrow.** _

_**You must speak to it till your voice** _

_**catches the thread of all sorrows** _

_**and you see the size of the cloth.** _

 

 

She continued to talk. Tells her about the townsfolk who talked crap after the accident, the bullshit that they’d spread faster than a Californian wildfire before the trees hit the floor.

 

Neda opened up. _Common ground always does work, doesn’t it?_ Ben Urich’s voice rings true inside her head.

 

Karen listened intently, took down her notes. Listened some more, offered her sympathy since you know, there’s nothing more people enjoy internally than common ground and sympathy. 

 

 

**_Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,_ **

**_only kindness that ties your shoes_ **

**_and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,_ **

**_only kindness that raises its head_ **

 

 

And then comes the kicker. The one that finally made her patient act slip, her feet to tumble in this familiar waltz she’d been doing and for a moment, she doesn’t remember the lines to this play she’d acted in for several months.

 

**“A man in a black mask”**

 

That’s all it took for her routine to break. Hope bubbled through her then. Faster than the grief stirring upon the anniversary that made her hands itch for whiskey and rum three times a day, faster than the answers she was asking from the woman she was talking to, faster and faster and faster.

 

Hope, she discovered, after talking to Foggy had a shitty as fuck after-taste.

 

 

_**from the crowd of the world to say** _

_**It is I you have been looking for,** _

_**and then goes with you everywhere** _

_**like a shadow or a friend.** _

 

 

 

Later, Karen would snicker when she’s drunk thinking of this very moment.

 

Of course, only bloody Matthew Murdock, the king of martyrs, the prince of deceitful smiles and the slave of a God who continued to punish them all; would let her know he’s alive by saving the daughter of a real-estate developer who starred in the Heiresses of Manhattan. 

 

A rancid chuckle.

 

 _Of course._


End file.
